


Between dusk and dawn

by withered



Series: liminal space [24]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams, F/M, Injury, Insomnia, Post-Soul Society Arc, ichiruki month 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25653283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withered/pseuds/withered
Summary: He's healing. It's good.Rukia still wants to yell at him though.
Relationships: Kuchiki Rukia/Kurosaki Ichigo
Series: liminal space [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1413535
Comments: 21
Kudos: 60
Collections: Ichiruki Month!





	Between dusk and dawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pomegranate_Kore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pomegranate_Kore/gifts).



Rukia used to be scared of the dark. Whenever she could, she'd stand guard, keep watch. She couldn't afford to be a sitting duck. 

She refused to be prey to the horrors of the night.

It was a survival instinct more than anything else. 

You can't fight what you can't see, after all, and as a child of the Rukongai, being able to fight is what keeps you alive. For whatever that's worth. 

Rukia's never given it much thought, what it would be like if she decided that the price of her life in the district wasn't worth it. She'd already died once, what was another date with death? 

She doesn't remember her first death anyway, if she can even call it that. But she's seen the deaths here, and. It's hard to imagine there's much purpose in the senselessness of it. 

The fast deaths are just that: One day you're here, the next day you're not. Whether it's at the end of a knife or a leap off a building, there's a feverish tint in their eyes alight with desperation and high off adrenaline until there isn't.

A life that was there. 

And then, not.

The slow deaths are harder, almost. She's seen people waste away in their skins, seen them blink sluggishly as the light in their eyes fizzles like a flickering candle. It happens gradually, a dimming. Time waxing away at them until it eats at the wick and dies altogether.

When death wants you, it will come in whatever form it must to take you.

But survival does not understand. It's a beast that is fed once, and is hungry forever. 

With every day -- in the Rukongia, as a shinigami -- she nourishes it, and in exchange, she lives. 

She stops being scared of the dark. And she dreams.

Of rolling fields; of the salty breeze; of tumbling waves; of white peaked mountains; of purple blue skies; of a horizon that stretches wider than her arms. 

Someone told her once that if you dream of places you've never been to, or things you've never seen yourself, it's a dream of your past life. And Rukia thinks that's nice.

There is vastness to them, a strength, and a surety that runs bone deep, and she holds them close in her mind, wrapping them around her when the world gets too cold, too bright, too loud; too much. 

Those things are what she pictures as her "happy place" in meditation, when she's going through her katas, when she's focusing on her spiritual pressure. Though nostalgia could never do them justice, they are the only memories not stained in blood and death, and they are hers.

Dreaming of people, though, is rare, she's warned like it had been something she'd wanted, and Rukia dismisses this because she's never dreamt of anyone. This admission made the person sad, though, and Rukia hadn't understood why until they'd said, "That sounds lonely."

"Alone and lonely aren't the same," she replied because it's true.

She's never been alone. The district was overcrowded. The academy favoured communal spaces. The Kuchiki family boosts several branches. There are always meetings and training sessions and appearances that must be made with tens to hundreds of others. She hasn't experienced what being alone is, but Rukia knows what it's like to be lonely, and her dreams are not. 

It's only after.

After losing her powers, and being taken back to Soul Society, and lifted up in offering to the embrace of the Halberd.

She dreams.

She dreams of faces she can't see watching from below. Of a figure in black. Of a silver sword. Of orange hair bright and smouldering like a sunset and bright brown eyes and a cocky smirk. 

She dreams of a rainy field. Of a juicebox. Of a closet. Of a classroom. Of a rooftop.

She dreams of the tooth white mask of a Hollow. Of a full moon sky. Of a boy with her sword at his chest telling her his name.

"Memories are common in dreams, especially for things that don't happen often," she's further told, and this, she believes because Ichigo is not the type of person that happens often at all.

He's anchored her to both his world and her own, pushed her for more than she's ever been able to do and give someone else, and shown her what it's like to be in the moments between the fighting and the training: the life. 

In the midst of rolling hills, and tumbling waves, and purple blue skies, is his hand reaching out before the doors close between them, of him standing on that bridge and telling her that he's here to rescue her, of him standing between her and death. 

Vastness, strength, surety: "I'll always come."

But stranger still are the dreams that come from nowhere at all. Not her theoretical past life. Not her recent memories. 

Of fingers intertwined, and tangled legs and bowed heads and smiles not shadowed by inevitable goodbye. Of hands reaching out and arms spread wide, not to measure the horizon but to hold it in their arms and.

Rukia is not scared of the dark. But she is scared of him. Of the dreams. Of what they mean.

Sometimes she wakes in the middle of the night and spends it watching the night deepen from a bruise to a void, sight seemingly stolen minute by minute, second by second.

Beside her, the outline of Ichigo is a smudge of black against the ink of twilight, but the warmth there assures her of his presence, his breath constant and steady in the slight lift and fall of his chest beneath her palm.

Ichigo's been sleeping for days since the fight; his body and soul knitting itself together piece by piece, stitch by stitch.

He's healing. It's good. 

Rukia still wants to yell at him though.

For making his sisters cry. For making that furrow in his father's brows. For putting that fear and guilt in Inoue and Ishida's expressions. For scaring her. For getting hurt.

She doesn't say anything at all. He's not awake to hear her anyway, and what would be the point then?

When dusk gives way to dawn, the sky cracking open in slates of golden light; it spills blue and purple, it casts shadows along the planes of his face. In his sleep, Ichigo grimaces.

"You've been sleeping for too long," she tells him, reaching out to soothe his brow, and in response, his hand reaches back to squeeze her wrist.

Rukia has reflexes like that, it's automatic, it's protective. But Ichigo doesn't let go.

His throat works. His brow wrinkles again, though he doesn't open his eyes. "You're...here?"

"Of course, I am," she says with a hint of a teasing scoff. "Exactly how often do you dream of me, Ichigo?"

His breath tickles the sensitive skin of her wrist. "All the time." Then before she can react to that beyond a blink of surprise, he asks, "Are you real?"

"Yes."

"You would say that," he scoffs.

She scoffs in return. "You're ridiculous." So, "I can poke at your wound, you're not supposed to feel pain in your dreams."

"That's not true."

She thinks of the times when Ichigo's back is turned, when he won't look her in the eyes, when he doesn't reach back. And says, "No, it's not." Then, "What do people do to prove things aren't a dream?"

"Tell me something I don't know."

And Rukia thinks there's a lot she could say that he doesn't know. He's never asked about her past, and she's never told him. She doesn't know if it's in deference to protecting his own so that he doesn't ask what he can't give in return, but she doesn't want to put him in the position to find out.

She thinks about the news from Soul Society, gossip at the barracks, drama in the Kuchiki household; how she takes her tea, her favourite colour, the book she's currently reading. Except. Ichigo knows these things already. 

His lashes flutter like the nervous flutter of a butterfly's wings against the apple of his cheeks. His grasp on her wrist twitches and tightens. "Rukia?"

She tangles her fingers through his hair and murmurs, "I dream of you too."


End file.
